The government of California's approach to transparency became a little clearer this afternoon when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the posting of state contracts and audits of state agencies on its transparency website.
The site, launched earlier this year, added new tabs today to coincide with the signing of Executive Order S-08-09, which requires all state contracts worth $5,000 or more to be posted on the site. In addition to contracts, the order directs executive branch agencies to post information on operations, budget and programs and (at least) a list of all audits dating back to January 2008. State CIO Teri Takai is on point for making it all work.
The Reporting Government Transparency Web site, as it is known, already provides a repository for travel expense claims by public employees and financial disclosures by senior staff and deputies in the Governor's office, agency secretaries and undersecretaries and department directors. These first two tabs for travel and financial disclosure demonstrate that Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis is still right -- sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The move is another example of seeing what happens when public records are actually public. While the Executive Order is silent on the issue, the service would be made more valuable if it flagged those contracts that were awarded without competition, or were the solicitations resulted in only a single bid (which, by definition, is also non-competitive).
Single bid awards are a symptom of a procurement system -- particularly in information technology -- that is experiencing a policy failure and market failure simultaneously. They should be treated as indicator of the relative health of the system until the underlying disease moves beyond diagnosis to treatment and cure.
To use another but equally useful analogy, flags on single bid awards would also be roughly equivalent to the asterisks (*) dotting once-storied baseball records -- bringing with them the caution that things may not be as they appear.
The site, launched earlier this year, added new tabs today to coincide with the signing of Executive Order S-08-09, which requires all state contracts worth $5,000 or more to be posted on the site. In addition to contracts, the order directs executive branch agencies to post information on operations, budget and programs and (at least) a list of all audits dating back to January 2008. State CIO Teri Takai is on point for making it all work.
The Reporting Government Transparency Web site, as it is known, already provides a repository for travel expense claims by public employees and financial disclosures by senior staff and deputies in the Governor's office, agency secretaries and undersecretaries and department directors. These first two tabs for travel and financial disclosure demonstrate that Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis is still right -- sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The move is another example of seeing what happens when public records are actually public. While the Executive Order is silent on the issue, the service would be made more valuable if it flagged those contracts that were awarded without competition, or were the solicitations resulted in only a single bid (which, by definition, is also non-competitive).
Single bid awards are a symptom of a procurement system -- particularly in information technology -- that is experiencing a policy failure and market failure simultaneously. They should be treated as indicator of the relative health of the system until the underlying disease moves beyond diagnosis to treatment and cure.
To use another but equally useful analogy, flags on single bid awards would also be roughly equivalent to the asterisks (*) dotting once-storied baseball records -- bringing with them the caution that things may not be as they appear.
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